"Hey, look it there! I just saw a thousand dollars..."
Recently, Hollaback, a non-profit organization fighting to end street harassment, uploaded a video that has circulated the web.
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In this video, titled "Here's What It's Like to Walk Down the Street in New York City as a Woman", a female in her 20's, dressed in a casual outfit (jeans and a black T-shirt) spends 10 hours walking soundlessly down the streets of Manhattan. Although she keeps to herself and directs her attention ahead of her, she receives a remarkable amount of cat-calls, disrespectful come-ons and even several cases of stalking. A total of over 100 instances of verbal street harassment was recorded within this 10-hour experiment.
Unfortunately, this isn't a surprising scenario. Although shocking and shameful, situations like this are far from being uncommon in the patriarchal world that exists in "every quadrant of the globe." According to David Newman, the patriarchy allows men to thrive as the dominant sex and legally "protects male interests and privileges." This means that women were at the expense, being left with less advantageous social opportunities in terms of the conflict perspective. In the experiment, the men on tape freely tossed lewd comments at the young woman in a way that solely nurtured their satisfaction and temporarily entertained them. They were clearly unaware of how discomforting and degrading their comments were to her as an individual.
Furthermore, the video prompts a reaction from the audience that is equally threatening and even more shocking than the verbal street harassments directed towards the young woman. In response to the video, hundreds of comments were posted. A frighteningly amount sounded like this:
As written above, the men (and one woman) behind the comments express their opinions about how exaggerated the issue was. To them, the young woman was receiving flattering compliments rather than victimizing harassments that crippled her social value. A point was also made that she was supposed to defend herself, a responsibility pinned on females because of the normalized notion that men are allowed to let their sexual impulses roam free.
And now let's take a look at the last comment, provided by that_indian_guy: "She is ugly." Are you serious? This user looks like he totally disregarded the inappropriate behavior displayed on tape and the message expressed through the experiment. How the woman's level of attraction seems to be the most important factor that stands out to him exemplifies the objectification of girls and women. Reinforcing looks as a measurement of social value in society, the user basically concludes that if she's not pretty enough, she's deemed irrelevant.
Below are the most-liked opinions (a.k.a. top comments) expressed by several Facebook users:
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Here, a woman, not only normalizes inappropriate street harassment, but she accepts the fact that "boys will be boys." She also says it's the woman's responsibility for picking the right neighborhood to walk in and doesn't mention anything men have to do to decrease street harassment.
Another female commenter points out that the young woman isn't even that pretty.
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| These users to the left all joke around with the incidences of verbal street harassment the young woman experienced as if the situation was completely unnecessary and exaggerated. What's even more infuriating is the amount of support these comments received. |
The patriarchy and the entitled sense of dominance males have over females is a deeply rooted sociological structure that has a crippling effect on girls and women that often goes unnoticed. The sexual aggression expressed by men has been so normalized that it is hard to identify as wrong. As shown by the actions of the men in the taped experiment and the reactions of the top commenters, women are still forced to bear most of the responsibility of preventing sexual harassment, or else deal with the consequences. Or, in the eyes of the "the compliments."
Video link: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/10/29/street-harassment-video-new-york-city/18104973/
Funny or Die's parody, "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Man": http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/30/white_man_walking_in_nyc_funny_or_die_parodies_hollaback_street_harassment.html
It's interesting how this video is made to bring awareness to end street harassment and yet the comments on the video state how guys are just complimenting women. I can see how some of these could be considered complimenting and flattering but they aren't seeing the actual meaning. Then it is said that the women are supposed to defend themselves, implying that the blame is now on them. I like this post, it's great!
ReplyDeleteThis video has sparked a lot of reaction on the internet -- I've seen a lot of different articles about it, and some of them make some interesting points. One article from Slate brings up how the video shows a white woman who seems to be mostly harassed by black and Latino men, and wonders where all the white men catcallers are. The point of the video still holds, but this raises the question of its impact. Focusing on the selection of men the video does, the article says, means, "The men who are sitting in their offices or in cafes watching this video will instead be able to comfortably assure themselves that they don’t have time to sit on hydrants in the middle of the day and can’t properly pronounce “mami.”" It's an interesting read and I think something that gets overlooked a lot. There's also another video about catcalling at the end which is pretty funny but also pretty real.
ReplyDeleteLink: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/10/29/catcalling_video_hollaback_s_look_at_street_harassment_in_nyc_edited_out.html
Like Kendall said this women is mostly harassed by black and Latino men. This is likely because she walked through urban areas of New York rather than places like Wall Street. There was some talk of this video at a Ray Warren keynote event (Blackness and Beauty) and many people agreed that this type of catcalling was part of urban culture. People said that in this culture the majority of comments made by these men were not offensive to those who understood that culture. This is not to say that catcalling is okay, but rather to point out that the racial divide in this video is likely due to culture.
ReplyDeleteI realize that this is a long wall of text, but I think the importance of the subject matter justifies a lengthy response.
ReplyDeleteThis video struck me in a number of ways, but I do not necessarily want to speak about the video itself. As this video has gained viral status we have learned new information that shapes the way that we have to view the video. Knowing that it was made as an ad campaign, it was produced by men, and most abhorred of all the fact that white male harassers were specifically edited out of the video, all make the video itself problematic. (I also was enlightened to a new perspective at the opening panel for the Ray Warren Symposium as Ashley mentioned before that the supposedly “catcalling” behavior is a part of a subculture that not all of us necessarily are attune to. I do not feel capable to speak more on that particular subject because I myself am not a woc but what Dr.Yaba Blay, Michaela Angela Davis, and Patrice Grell Yurski said on the matter was very eye-opening and has made me reflect more on my initial perceptions.)
So, despite the layers of issues with the video itself, I wanted to talk about some of my own personal experiences talking about the video with my friends and peers and the general trend I have seen in comments on videos that address gender inequality. The comments themselves on this video and other videos with similar themes seem to reflect the degree to which inequality is ingrained in society. The YouTube channel Buzzfeed regularly addresses gender in its videos, and the comment sections can be terrifying. Videos that take a look at inequality are instantly swamped by people that aggressively deny the existence of inequality. In several of these Buzzfeed videos women speak about their experiences; a few in particular that I remember are titled “What It’s Like to be a Woman at Night,” What It’s Like to be a Woman Online.” These videos feature women sharing their real experiences, and yet the comments instantly become negative, and start to attack women. The number of times that I have read “oh my god stop complaining,” “not ALL men are like that,” “if you want equality then why do men have to pay for dates,” and “shut up feminist bitches” or similar derogatory jargon has made it so that I have to force myself to not look at the comment sections. I know what awaits me is gross, misogynistic defenses when the entire point of these videos is to listen to the experiences of someone else. The comment section instantly becomes about how men feel about what the women say, when really, in my opinion, what needs to be happening is these men need to listen to the experiences of women, and process them, rather than instantly feel the need to argue or respond. This goes the same with other forms of discrimination and inequality. When a person of color shares an experience, even though this experience is not shared by everyone because of the structure of privilege, those with the privilege need to listen. When people share how inequality affects them, it is not an opportunity for people to question what they say; no one can take someone else’s experience of oppression away from them...
On a related note, a friend of mine posts images that are very similar to what we see on the Sociological Images blog often speaking to gender inequality. There is one male peer in particular who on every post comments with an argument against whatever the image tries to communicate. The reason I wanted to comment on Sydney’s blog post specifically is because this male peer and I had a particularly heated argument over the street harassment video. He argued that the video is too much of a generalization, and that street harassment is not as big of an issue as we seem to think it is. I disagreed. The argument at one point had four of my female friends and I posting about why as females, we see it as a real issue that is necessary to address. The point that we kept trying to make did not have to do with the video itself, it had to do with our hope that he could simply listen. In every comment he made, he proceeded to marginalize and argue with our experiences with street harassment (as well as the experiences of our female friends and relatives that had been shared with us and which we chose to share with him).
ReplyDeleteI cannot go into everything I want to in this comment because it is just a huge complex issue, but what I hope for, is for people to just listen. When an individual who is oppressed shares an experience it is not the place to defend the actions of the privileged, or to explain how privileged people get their feelings hurt too (aka privileged people are negatively affected by the structure of inequality too) . I feel as though we would all be better off if people could just listen. Listen to the experience of others even if you have never experienced the same issues yourself. We need to learn the skill of listening in order to be allies and to lessen inequality.
I think that this is an interesting experiment, not because of what is shows about the way that men see women, but because of how skewed the study is. If you look into their ethical practices surrounding what they chose to include and what they edited out for example, you will find reasons why the video really only shows black men, and other questionable misrepresentations. Are "How are you doing?" or "You are beautiful!" really sexual harassment? I watched a similar video but with an attractive man, and he got a lot of the same responses as this woman.
ReplyDelete